Summary so far
We will shortly be closing this live blog. In the meantime, here is a quick recap of the past few hours.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who ended the cold war, died in Moscow aged 91. “Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” Interfax news agency cited Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital as saying in a statement. He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass news agency, citing a source familiar with the family’s wishes.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin expresses his deepest condolences, a Kremlin spokesman told the Interfax news agency.
Gorbachev’s political legacy was destroyed by Putin as the era of detente and arms control between Washington and Moscow is replaced by a bloody war in Ukraine, Julian Borger writes.
The former Soviet leader was celebrated across liberal democracies but reviled and unpopular in Russia, Pjotr Sauer writes. His policy of ‘glasnost’, or openness, gave Russians previously unthinkable levels of freedom, but for many, his rule will be remembered by the dramatic plunge in living standards that followed.
Gorbachev, a champion of arms control, opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine. He issued a statement through his foundation in the days after Russia’s invasion calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations”. “There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives,” he added.
A flood of tributes from across the world poured in for the man described as “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century” and universally credited with ending the cold war.
US President Joe Biden described Gorbachev as a man of “remarkable vision” who led his country on the path to reform. “These were the acts of a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it,” Biden said in a statement. “The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.”
António Guterres, general secretary of the United Nations, said Gorbachev was a “one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history”. “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace. I’m deeply saddened by his passing,” he tweeted.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Gorbachev as “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians”. “His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history,” he added.
Boris Johnson, the outgoing British prime minister, said he “always admired the courage and integrity he showed in bringing the cold war to a peaceful conclusion”.
Gorbachev was the most important world figure of the last quarter of the 20th century. Almost singlehandedly he brought an end to 40 years of east-west confrontation in Europe and liberated the world from the danger of nuclear conflagration. Read his full obituary here.
In a 2011 interview with the Guardian, Gorbachev said he should have resigned in April 1991 and formed a democratic party of reform, adding he regretted “the fact that I went on too long in trying to reform the Communist party”.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev “changed the world for the better”, in a tribute message posted on Wednesday afternoon following the death of the last leader of the Soviet Union.
He freed the nations of Eastern Europe from the prison of Soviet rule, and helped bring an end to the Cold War,” Albanese wrote in a message posted to Facebook, calling Gorbachev “a man of warmth, hope, resolve and enormous courage”.
With his death we have lost one of the true giants of the 20th century.”
